I did not like CRZ. The very idea is idiotic and insulting, a giant slap in the face from Blizzard to their customers. "Yes, we realize the zones are empty, so here's a way to make them feel populated without addressing any of the real problems related to underpopulated or dying realms."

Thanks to CRZ, I now compete with more players for fewer rare spawns, and also have similar issues with gathering, and with quest mobs that don't respawn fast enough. (I didn't see a single Black Lotus in the months I played after CRZ launched.) There's increased opportunity for pvp ganking. (Yes, I know that ganking shouldn't happen on PvE realms. However, there are ways to encourage or trick potential victims to flag themselves. Or the would-be griefers can just slaughter quest-givers and vendors.) I can meet players from other realms, but I can't invite them into my guild, trade with them, or even be confident that I'll see them again. Hell, I can't even reliably carry on conversations with the people I see, since traveling through zones can cause us to phase apart, never to see each other again.

CRZ fixes nothing, and encourages the transitory, non-social feeling of modern World of Warcraft. Sure, there are lots of other players, but it's not like how you treat them actually matters.

The one thing I suppose CRZ may succed at: fooling brand new players that the realm they've selected isn't an empty wasteland, even though it is.

I honestly don't think I've been hanging out in non-Pandaria zones enough to even notice CRZ. My personal experience with it is the slight loading times when I cross into new zones sometimes when flying around in the old world. Uhm... yeah, that's about it.

Weirdly, the same people who say how great CRZ's are tend to also say LFG is bad. Go figure.

I personally don't care for it. Doesn't matter if I don't see other people while leveling up, only when I'm max level and actually doing something that matters. And CRZ's screwed up low level farming quite badly, so there's more negative to the positive.

---------- Post added 2013-05-15 at 06:12 AM ----------

Originally Posted by ringpriest

CRZ fixes nothing, and encourages the transitory, non-social feeling of modern World of Warcraft. Sure, there are lots of other players, but it's not like how you treat them actually matters.

Pretty much this too. Its a bandaid that gives a shallow illusion of there being a community.

I love CRZ. It makes the world alive! Not enough as I'd like but still something.

On a PVP realm that is, where you can sometimes KILL the competition! I mean, what's the point of having two factions if you're not pissing each other off!?

Sure it's not always amazing PVP and you lose(gasp! the L word!). At least SOMEONE is having a little excitment and next time it might be YOUR turn! Just another purpose for your l33t gear and gaming skills.

As for farming mounts and mats? Does it look like I give a fuck if my "farming" and "camping mounts" is interrupted?

CRZ is good for low pop realms but keep that crap away from the high pop ones. They don't need any more people or competition. High pop should all be phased on their own realms and not let any outsiders in. Prime example is sholazar basin. That zone should be phased for each realm, not a FFA for the whole battlegroup.

Not really, i personally dislike it. I'm on a nearly dead server, and i have had nothing but trouble with it. Yes you can see other toons now, but all they do is ganking low level toons and when you get a high level toon there, they will simply phase out and you will never see them again. You cant really go and raid with other people as you cant spam trade for more people. The AH is not CRZ and so you cant buy anything there. You can not make a CRZ guild.

So the only thing it does is let you see more people, the only thing you can do with those extra people is /wave to them and have a bit of a talk. But as it is, the community is hardly worth talking to, so it might just as well have been NPC's running around there, and you would not have noticed the difference.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?(Epicurus 341 - 270 BC)

Weirdly, the same people who say how great CRZ's are tend to also say LFG is bad. Go figure.

Not hard to figure really.

LFG helped remove more people from the world. CRZ is attempting to add them back. Ultimately I'd like to "know" players. I love having rivals from across faction (even when it's an alt from someone in my guild lol) where the sight of them brings on that feeling of "YOU!"

From an server economy standpoint, low pop servers get the downside of being on a high pop server (tons of competition for mats) without reaping the upside benefit of those mats being on the AH. The only thing it accomplishes is that you see people out in the world...but even then, I don't see too many people out and about in old world zones.

This.

I get all the downsides of a high pop server... crowded zones, gankers, competition for mats, people fighting over spawns, trying to quest and running into a hundred other lowbies fighting over the same mobs, etc.

Yet I get NONE of the benefits. I go to my own AH and it's empty. The city streets are barren. No groups to do anything. Which is funny because I just spent 2 hours out in the world fighting other people over quest mobs.

CRZ is an annoyance for low pop realms more than anything. It does a great job of populating the world but does a fucking horrible job at fixing the REAL problems of low pop servers.

TBh I don't like it. Usually I spend most time at end game content anyway, and there's no CRZ, but sometimes I want to level and alt and I'm sick of running dungeons, so I try to quest. "try" is a good word because you can't even kill fucking quest mobs, so many people hunting them aswell. Then I just log off because it's pissing me off.
I won't even start talking about farming low level materials, it's nightmare these days.

I think CRZ would make sense in a game where you actually need to group up for questing, then it would be fantastic, but in WoW most efficent way is just solo all, and other people are just annoyance

TBh I don't like it. Usually I spend most time at end game content anyway, and there's no CRZ, but sometimes I want to level and alt and I'm sick of running dungeons, so I try to quest. "try" is a good word because you can't even kill fucking quest mobs, so many people hunting them aswell. Then I just log off because it's pissing me off.
I won't even start talking about farming low level materials, it's nightmare these days.

I think CRZ would make sense in a game where you actually need to group up for questing, then it would be fantastic, but in WoW most efficent way is just solo all, and other people are just annoyance

At least your last sentence shows you got the picture for future plans right...

In the meantime it is funny to read your first part: players complain because too much "players" around in their leveling zones in ... an M M O (dear God that we ever even had to see this posted).

WOW - nevertheless grtz you at least you gave it some thought HOW CRZ is going to change everything in eternal populated worlds in the future.

Welcome to a more and more perfected technology with seamless open world background loading, phasing and CRZ's...

Only to be seen in the next MMO coming from Blizzard of course The rest will compete in the f2p garbage cans.

---------- Post added 2013-05-15 at 10:07 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Coldhearth

This.

I get all the downsides of a high pop server... crowded zones, gankers, competition for mats, people fighting over spawns, trying to quest and running into a hundred other lowbies fighting over the same mobs, etc.

Yet I get NONE of the benefits. I go to my own AH and it's empty. The city streets are barren. No groups to do anything. Which is funny because I just spent 2 hours out in the world fighting other people over quest mobs.

CRZ is an annoyance for low pop realms more than anything. It does a great job of populating the world but does a fucking horrible job at fixing the REAL problems of low pop servers.

Let us toggle it ON/OFF ffs.

Another dude not able to see further than his nose. So what will you tell when CRZ AH is introduced and cities will be included ?

Not there yet ? Rome wasn't built in one season either.

Are you that limited as a person to NOT see these future developments coming ?

Honestly, I don't really get the big issue with CRZ. I don't understand why so many people are upset. Sometimes I think they're just looking for another reason to bitch about. I leveled a monk - 90% through outdoor questing - and also spent quite some time on all WoW continents because I was leveling some professions, and I always farm all the stuff myself. I could hardly tell that CRZ is even in place. I just didn't notice any difference, and most certainly nothing that affected me in a particularly negative way.

Maybe I was just lucky, but it seems to me that to a certain extent, the whole drama is another example of it's only in your head, duuuude.

yeah I know what is mmo, I'm playng this game since TBC and often did it with friend or 2, but right now I just want to level my alts asap, and keep the mmo aspects of the game for end game content. I know many people share this opinion, nobody like when some other people are killing THEIR tigers.

I kind of agree with Nemro but I don't see any reason to have to group with people at low levels. Maybe if they'd bring back some lowbie elite quests or group quests or maybe quests that require you to visit multiple zones or something then the leveling process might get some of the "epic"ness back instead of being just a big set of inconveniences on your way up the line. Then people would probably be more inclined to make groups and crz might serve some real purpose.

But aside from that, I agree, CRZ is pretty much useless and I'm not at all a fan of the idea. Wish it were gone.

I'm all for it. I'm even hoping for some realms to be permanently bound together, so they could have cross realm AH and guilds.

It adds people into the world for levelling. For new players, this will be exceptionally important.

It does make rare pet hunting tricky. Some of them need their spawn rates adjusting IMO, to account for this. I've had to dip into an RP realm to find some. Sometimes you get glitches at the edge of zones, where you can see mobs, and as you pass from one realm to another, they disappear.

Honestly, the idea of a "realm" is one that's based on technical limitations. Treating areas as huge joined "instances" could make for a fixed population across the game. Reducing density on over-populated realms, and increasing in quiet areas.

I've just read how someone quit over CRZ in another thread and rather than derail I thought I'd ask the question separately:

If you don't like it, why?
If you do like it, why?

What (if any) impact have you seen from it?

*NOTE* - Talk about your own experiences, friend of a friend examples don't count, don't invoke "everyone" when you mean "I" and give examples, simply saying "it killed wow" isn't going to help, but "I think it killed wow because......" will at least give me an idea what all the fuss is about.

For me, I've leveled two new toons since it was introduced and I can't say I noticed if I was part of a CRZ or not.

I also play on a PVE server and can't say I've ever seen anything, but then I mainly stay in Pandaria where as far as I know it's not turned on.

It could be me just not paying attention, it could be it effects something I have nothing to do with (mining / herbing have been examples I've read about) I honestly have no feelings about it one way or the other, I'm just curious what people's problems are because it's not something I've noticeably experienced and yet seems to have impacted some people.

*2nd NOTE* - This isn't an excuse to vent about dead servers, they're a problem and not enough is being done about them, but this isn't the thread for that, this is purely about CRZ and your experiences (good or bad) with it.

The main reason is that it has not solved any problem. It was a band aid fix that didn't solve the main problem and what people were asking for. In fact its caused more issues and other problems.

One of the common reasons, Blizzard often gives for the current graphics and textures is so that the game makes itself available to people with old computers. However, the same players get screwed with the CRZ. The zones are laggy, my FPS drops, frequent disconnects was common until recently.

That is only some of the problems. I play on a RP realm. I am CR with Moon Guard and a bunch of others. There was a reason me and many others left MG a while back cause of the immaturity. Now we get stuck with them. There is a reason people choose their realms whatever that may be. Sure you may say, block General chat or something but should I have to go through such lengths. The amount of spam I get through on a daily basis is absurd. The amount of trolling has gone up.

CRZ didn't solve the problem of imbalanced AH on low populated servers, a small raiding population and an even small player base to choose from. That is what people were hoping Blizzard would fix. Blizzard goes and introduces CRZ when all the group quests were changed so that they could be solod and created a single player experience in Cata and MoP.

Sure its good seeing people out in the real world, but does the small benefits out weight the bigger problems? I don't think so. This was probably Blizzard's lame idea to consolidate their servers and save up on costs.